Autumn is here. It’s now dark when we get up in the morning, and we only have a couple of hours of daylight left after work. We’re wearing coats and boots again, watching the leaves slowly fill our gutters, and inching ever closer to lighting our woodburners. We opened the curtains this morning to find…
Seasonal Food
Apple Crisps
Apple season has arrived here in Somerset, and the fruits on each of our trees are busy ripening in quick succession. The orchard equivalent of a musical canon. There is a wonderful mix of eaters and cookers. Some are great for roasting, bubbling down into a compote, or turning into chutney. Others are best crunched…
Beetroot Leaf and Potato Gratin
The last of our beetroot have reached the size of Bramley apples and are starting to turn a little woody. They need harvesting quickly before they reach the point of no return and end up on the compost heap. So, at the weekend, we pulled up a huge basketful, leaving just a couple of the…
Chanterelle, Kale and Purple Sage Tagliatelle
Back when we were living in the city, we borrowed a scrappy and crumpled old book from the local library called Urban Dreams, Rural Realities by Daniel Butler and Bel Crewe. It was about a couple who had moved from London to the Welsh countryside to live life on a smallholding and we were curious…
Mulberry, Goats Cheese, Rocket Leaf and Fennel Toasts
We tried our first mulberries at a family barbecue on a sweltering summer day. There was a sprawling black mulberry tree by the garden wall, crooked and aged. It looked like something out of a fairy story. Enveloped below its heart-shaped leaves were fruits so ripe they were falling off the branches and smooshing on…
Garden Soup and Carrot Leaf Pesto
Every couple of weeks during the summer and early autumn, we make a big pot of soup with fresh vegetables and herbs from the garden. Whatever is in plentiful supply at the time. That way none of our surplus veg go to waste. We usually squirrel some portions away in little freezer tubs, ready for…
Herbed Omelette with Griddled Courgette, Halloumi, and Nasturtiums
One of the lovely things about growing our own food is being able to pop outside and literally pick our own meals. Breakfasts, lunches and dinners are built around whatever is flourishing or newly appearing in the veg beds, orchard and herb patch at any given point in time. Yesterday morning, before the rain came,…
Beetroot, Cocoa and Sea Salt Cake
This year we have two different varieties of beetroot seeded alongside the rainbow carrots, chard and parsnips in the vegetable patch. The classic looking Rhonda, which we grow every year for its well-flavoured, deep magenta bulbs; and the Italian Barabietola di Chioggia, which produces beautiful rose red roots with fabulous pink and white striped flesh. …
Gooseberry Soda
In the dappled shade of an enormous cooking apple tree sits the gooseberry patch. Three sprawling bushes that produce an abundance of bright green, delicately striped berries. They dangle from the branches like Japanese lanterns. Neighbouring the gooseberries at the moment is an untamed bed of nettles (that we haven’t had a chance to strim…
Cherry, Vanilla and Cinnamon Clafoutis
We have had a bumper cherry crop this year. The two trees in the orchard have been so laden with fruit that their branches have arched and drooped with the weight of the hefty bunches. The ruby cherries, speckled with flecks of pale orange and yellow, are beautifully sweet, and full of juice. As the…